Arguing that ports of entry have been overlooked as the federal government beefs up security along the US-Mexico border, Nogales-based businessmen pressed Arizona legislators on May 25 for help in persuading the federal government to provide more funding to ease congestion at the states’ legal gateways.

For almost 100 years, the Holler family homestead has stood just about 50 feet north of the U.S.-Mexico border, and for much of that time members enjoyed the perks of hopping easily across the ribbon of land separating Nogales, Ariz., and Nogales, Sonora. But life changed during the ’90s, when U.S. Customs and Border Protection replaced a chain-link border fence with a much larger, corrugated-metal fence.

The federal government hasn't come up with a comprehensive strategy to secure the U.S.-Mexico border, even as an all-out war between Mexico and its violent drug gangs has claimed 35,000 lives and pushed hundreds of thousands of immigrants into the United States.

U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano said Thursday that security on the southern U.S. border "is better now than it ever has been" and that violence from neighboring Mexico hasn't spilled over in a serious way.

U.S. border mayors, including the Mayor of Nogales, are teaming up to promote the positive side of their communities while combatting a negative image of crime and violence associated with Mexican drug gangs.

In 1916, Capt. Charles T. Boyd, Lt. Henry Adair and Capt. Lewis S. Morey, on direct orders from Gen. John “Blackjack” Pershing himself, led their regiments across large swaths of desert to check on a possible buildup of Mexican troops around the small northern Mexican town of Villa Ahumada.